Second Guessing
by sdbubbles
Summary: "I could go back, rewind and play it again; and if I did it over would I wind up with you in the end? Since the all the wrong choices are the reason I'm here today; I'm gonna stop second guessing my mistakes..."


**A/N: In case you're wondering, the song I've used is "Second Guessing" by Sunny Sweeney, and this is set after "Flesh and Blood," an episode way back last November.**

* * *

 _Came from a broken home  
Listened to bad advice  
I took too many pills  
Married the wrong, the wrong guy_

She looks across the room at him and sees his smile. Last week, the drink, the laughter, the burying of her mother's ashes, being packed off to Paris, quickly return to her mind. Here, in her office, she just wants to thank him. She can feel the blossoming of a love for him in her heart; it does not matter to her what kind of love she finds for him. She's just happy to have him around. It's been a long time since she's felt that way for another person, and she knows exactly what taught her never to allow it.

How has she come so far from where she was? She's not impressionable and she is definitely not stupid, but she's taken questionable advice and fallen for many tricks in her time – just as everyone in this world does sometimes. Heaven knows she has been, on occasion, the troublemaker and the ill-adviser. She's been through the wringer so many times, always when she thinks she might actually be getting somewhere closer to happiness.

For a time, she had been reliant on more than herself. She had been a mess when she was much, much younger, and it had caused her judgement to become coloured in an unhelpful, rose-tinted way. Forever trying to find the good in the world, and in people, she had managed to find it where it didn't exist.

In her dispirited state, she had found someone she thought she could believe in, and married him. It wasn't until years later she saw him for the person he really was – funnily enough, it was when the illness receded and she came off the medication that she had started to see the world, and the people in it, with harsher, clearer vision.

 _But then I helped him leave  
Struck out on my own  
Until I met you  
I made excuses for the damage done_

When she caught the man she married cheating on her, she had drawn a line, knowing that living with him would only undo all the hard work she had put into making herself well again. It was then that she realised her now-ex-husband's speciality is, and always has been, using her fragilities against her. Everyone has their weakness, but only a few are weak enough themselves to feel the need to manipulate the fault lines of others.

So she had gone about becoming a divorced single mother. Threw herself into her work. Tried her very, very best to be a good mother. Despite the ups and the downs, she feels she managed to do a halfway decent job. Her daughter is a good woman. That's all she's ever really wanted. Her only fear is that she will take after her mother and become too fiercely independent, after watching an independent, though secretly lonely, woman bring her up for more than half her young life.

But now, as she watches him, she realises she has never had an excuse for letting herself become lonely. All it took last week was for her was to let someone really know her. He is younger than her but he is almost as wise – in some respects, perhaps he is wiser. She has never truly reached out. She's never willingly allowed anyone but her ex-husband to see her vulnerabilities, and for good reason. She learned from that man that vulnerabilities can be used to harm her.

She only really saw the damage her marriage and subsequent divorce has done last week. It's a leap of faith for her to trust her friend and colleague with the knowledge that she is human. Nothing but a determined, strong, fragile human being. Around the rest of the world, she's always tried to be something else. Something more. She found the courage to stop trying, and it was her trust in him that allowed her to do it.

 _I could go back, rewind and play it again_  
 _And if I did it over would I wind up with you in the end?_  
 _Since the all the wrong choices are the reason I'm here today_  
 _I'm gonna stop second guessing my mistakes_

But if she had never been ill, never married, never had a child, never been divorced, never been a single mother...she doesn't even know what she would be today. Maybe she would be happier, but she cannot help but think that she would be far more naïve than she is now. She wouldn't know anything. She would still be the person she was when she was a young woman; she really does not like that thought.

And, really, she would be a more open person. She would have been more open about how her mum's death has affected her, and nobody would have felt the need to sit down and help her, because she would have willingly told them everything. This distrust of the world she has learned throughout her adult life has actually forced someone to make the effort to get to know her, and that's the only reason she has the friend she found last week.

All those bad decisions, marrying the wrong man, taking him back thirteen years after they divorced, have taught her everything she knows about relationships. It's taught her caution and it's taught her the difference between a good apple and a rotten one. Thirty years ago, she didn't know the difference; even two years ago, she must not have known it, because she did get involved with her ex-husband again.

From now on, she vows to stop doubting herself; she's going to stop mistrusting her heart. Under no circumstances is her heart always right, but when it's wrong, it teaches itself so much. It internalises its own lessons, and, although it takes something drastic to open her heart up, it's always going to come good to her in the end.

 _Came from a family torn  
Fought almost every night  
Lived in a house you built  
For the wrong, the wrong wife  
_

She knows some things about the man before her, though she's under no illusion that she knows everything. She's encountered his drunk of a brother, who has an accent thicker than a lump of haggis steeped in whisky and IrnBru. She knows the carry on he's gone through with his wife, and that nobody knows who is the father of her baby is yet.

Having heard about the arguments, and seeing for herself the animosity between him and the other man involved with that wife of his, she knows he's been fighting for his right to live for months. He's all but given up on his marriage, and she knows the feeling of looking in a spouse's eyes and not knowing what they feel anymore. The betrayal becomes the basis of the relationship, never allowing trust back into matters again. It eats its way through a marriage until there's nothing left but its shattered pieces, strewn across the floor. They both understand that.

To make it even better, during their drinking session, he had admitted that his wife had cheated with a man they both know. A man they both work with. She can just imagine the torment that must inflict on him, especially now that he is actually trying to be civil with all involved in this mess of epic proportions.

Ultimately, his built a life with a woman who wants something he might not be able to give her, through little fault of his own. Maybe there was always a part of him that expected this mess to come around at some point; she has no way of knowing. But she knows this much: he deserves to be happy, because she knows he is a good man.

 _After the big divorce  
You struck out on your own  
Until you met me  
You made excuses about where you came from  
_

She's been in his position, and she knows the only place this situation is headed is divorce. That is not a nice destination but it's a necessary one to pass through. It has to be passed through, because on the other side will be the rest of his life, with which he can do whatever the hell he pleases. He's going to have to feel his way around the place until he finds the way out the other end, and he's going to come out on his own. He'll learn that in time, she guesses.

His position then will be one of isolation, but it will also be his freedom. He won't be tied to a wife who doesn't truly value him, or a marriage that's just disintegrating. He'll have his own life, with no ties to bind him, especially since she sincerely doubts that child his wife is carrying is actually his. The chances are slim to none.

It's not escaped her notice that he's stopped trying to reason with his problems. He seems to have given up on that. Instead, he's in that stage of acceptance that it has all fallen apart, and that there's probably not a great chance of being able to piece it all together. It seems he's taken to letting all the pieces fall where they may, because there's not a whole lot he can do with them anyway.

The excuses he has previously made for his wife have stopped, and the excuses he has made for himself have vanished. There never was an excuse, and she thinks he knows that now.

 _You could go back, rewind and play it again  
And if you did it over would you wind up with me in the end?  
Since all the wrong choices are the reason you're here today  
You've gotta stop second guessing your mistakes_

If he could do it all again, she knows he wouldn't do very much differently. He would still be the world-traveller, the adventurer, he always was, because it's in his very core. The spontaneity that sent her to Paris is pre-programmed in him, and she loves that he can do that. She can't do that unless she has a few drinks, but he can normally do it without even doubting himself for a moment.

Maybe, though, he would have dealt with matters differently. Maybe his marriage would be salvageable. Maybe he would be with his wife and not standing here in the office with her. Everything he's done wrong, every harsh word he has spoken and every physical blow he has thrown, has brought him to this.

The decision to try and destroy the career of the man his wife slept with, and his decision to deal with the dissolution of his marriage like he has, is how he ended up here with her. It's part of how they ended up in the office getting drunk last week, and part of why his good heart decided to send her off to France.

Those errors have given him so much in the way of wisdom and knowledge; he's just in the wrong place right now to recognise it for what it really is.

 _'Cause if they never happened_  
 _We'd never be where we are_  
 _And if just for a second something had changed_  
 _I wouldn't be right here in your arms_

Something in her, her heart in all its wisdom, throws her towards him. All their useless, stupid, naïve decisions push her to hold him tight and let him bury his face into the side of her neck. She acknowledges in silence that their imperfect lives make them who they are, and it's what makes them such good friends. It's not a matter of right and wrong. It's a matter of life. Life brought them here.

His arms are tight around her, reminding her that not all people want to see her fragilities only to overturn her. In him she senses the wish to know her simply because he wants to, and because he enjoys his time with her.

 _We could go back, rewind and play it again_  
 _And if we did it over would we end up with each other in the end?_  
 _As it turns out, together we're perfectly made_  
 _We've gotta stop second guessing_  
 _It was just a blessing_  
 _We've gotta stop second guessing_  
 _Our mistakes_

And just like everything else, there's no undoing it. There's no way they can go back, even if they want to, and stop themselves from growing closer. She can't go back to when she sat there, drunk and grieving, and tell herself to mistrust everything she's seeing. And why would she want to when there has been nothing that shouldn't be trusted?

After all, if she did that, she wouldn't have his friendship and his trust. She wouldn't have him to lean on, to talk to, to drink with, to laugh with, to grieve with...they would still be strangers to one another.

That, she knows now, would be a tragedy. Their natural inclinations in one another's company mean they are just designed to get along. They are fashioned perfectly to hold one another up and be there when one of them needs the other. There's no point in trying to explain it, she decides, just like there's no point in trying to explain her ex-husband's actions.

It just is. It's just the way things go, and they are fortunate to have each other when they are so tailored for it.

 _Came from a broken home  
Came from a family torn  
You've always got my back  
Just like I've got yours  
Just like I've got yours  
Just like I've got yours _

The infidelity, the illness, the struggles, the parenthood, the death and the destruction...where they've come from is what makes them who they are. It's what has put them in each other's arms, and she knows he's always going to try and be loyal to her, just as she will do her best for him.


End file.
